Proven Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses in 2016

Proven Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses in 2016

Whether your small business is just starting, already thriving, or is somewhat falling flat, it is important to regularly re-evaluate your marketing plans to see what actually works and what doesn’t. In today’s fast-paced, ever changing world, you have to prioritise to make the best of your resources and budget to avoid wasting money, time and/or effort in marketing strategies that are either outdated or those that your business just cannot benefit from.

It is important to note that although marketing campaigns may take a big chunk of your company budget, it is not something you should regard as optional – something that may be taken away from your business formula anytime. If done right, these marketing efforts may shoot you right to the success point you have been aiming for. But first off, how do you measure your success?

When it comes down to it, the most important factor that you have to measure when you try to evaluate your marketing efforts is their Return of Investments or ROI. If you meet the the pointers below, then undoubtedly, you have nailed an undeniable successful marketing campaign:

If you are able to sustain your campaigns long term?

If you are able to maximise your ROI with not only the budget but also the time and effort that you initially set for the campaign?

You have achieved both short-term and long-term ROI.

At ENCE Marketing, we have our own framework that accurately measures ROI against expenditures of our marketing campaigns. With over 227 clients served and a 153% average marketing ROI, we ensure that our clients see actual results of the marketing campaigns we do for them through concrete figures that show how well their businesses runs. Along with our continuous efforts to formulate marketing strategies that actually work, clients recognising the importance of evaluating the return of investment in generating leads and sales drive these SMEs through the success their businesses are experiencing now.

Creating a marketing plan for your small business may be daunting, let alone implementing and auditing an existing one. Talk to us today to know how ENCE Marketing group can help you out with your marketing needs. Together, with a sustainable and maximised ROI in mind, we’ll develop the best marketing strategies for your business.

To kick things off, this post will help you get started with some small business marketing strategies you can try out for your business.

Branding

Branding is one of the most important marketing strategies you can implement for your small business. It is imperative that you craft that brand message, and clearly demonstrate it in all of your marketing strategies.

All businesses, whether they are managed or not by a marketing agency based in Singapore or anywhere else in the world, must identify what makes their company better than any other company in their industry. Define unique selling points.

Whether it is the price of your products or services, quality, or store locations, properly positioning your business and aligning every marketing strategy to this positioning will give your target market the best identification and recall of your business. Consistency will surely help your business stick in the minds of your target market.

Inbound Marketing

Unlike outbound marketing strategies like traditional TV, radio, and print ads or their digital equivalents (e.g. buying email lists and buying ads), inbound marketing derives its strength from relationship marketing. This is where you produce quality content that can pull strangers toward your business and turn them into customers, who may even later evolve into promoters as well.

Inbound marketing uses a combination of online presence and engagement alongside compelling content relevant to your business to build a solid foundation for your business’ sales and growth. For inbound marketing, you can use tools that are inexpensive or are totally free—social media, blogs, emails, and social monitoring.

Offline, small business owners can hold events or can give discounts to people who participate in their surveys, people who refer potential customers, or people who avail of their services and products regularly.

The important question to answer here is how you can add more value to the businessand bring your market closer, sothat they, themselves, can become ambassadors of your products or services.

Digital Marketing

These days, we rely so much in the internet for almost every life decision we need to make that it is very hard for people to disconnect themselves from this technology. Small businesses shouldn’t resist the trend as well and instead, as cliché as it may sound, should just go with the flow.

Having a website, a responsive, mobile-friendly website at that, should be a high priority for small businesses. More and more people today rely on the web to look for businesses that can provide them with the services and products that they need.

If you ever decide on using digital marketing as strategy, kick it off with a mobile-responsive website first — yes, before even making your website desktop-responsive. According to Google, because of the boom in smartphone usage, there are now more searches coming from mobile phones than any other devices that have internet connection. Because of this, Google, which constantly updates to improve user experience, now imposes a penalty on websites that are not mobile-friendly.

So, if you’re someone who’s thinking of trying digital marketing, make sure your website caters to ‘on-the-go’ consumers who rely on their smartphones for information and you’re off to a good start.

Conclusion

The marketing strategies above can be managed for your business by the ENCE Marketing Group. Given the opportunity to service small to medium enterprises, it is important to note that we, as a Singapore-based marketing agency, use these strategies ourselves.

Parting thoughts for small business owners … we firmly believe that identifying who you are as a company and what makes you, your products or your services better than the rest should always be a priority. Once we’ve outlined that, all the other marketing strategies that will benefit your business will automatically make sense and readily fall into place.

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